Phillip

“Therefore it is only people living in the same period and, broadly speaking, in the same community, who inhabit the same world. People living in other periods, or even at the same period but in a totally different community, do not inhabit the same world about which they have different ideas, they inhabit different worlds altogether.”
― Owen Barfield

“Part of our primate heritage is that most of us want to feel that we fit in somewhere and are part of a group. Which group we're part of may matter less to some of us than others, as long as we're part of a group and not left entirely on our own. Although there are individual differences, being alone for too long causes neuro-chemical changes that can result in hallucinations, depression, suicidal thoughts, violent behaviors, and even psychosis. Social isolation is also a risk factor for cardiac arrest and death, even more so than smoking.”
― Daniel J. Levitin

“If people say the world we perceive is a 'construct' of our brains, they are saying in effect, that it results from an inveterate habit of thought. Why does it never occur to them that a habit is something you can overcome, if you set about it with enough energy?”
― Owen Barfield

“...the great experiences which form him, arise out of the discontinuity and disharmony between man and the world. Particularly in great personalities, we see how much of their beauty and excellence is really due to trials suffered earlier at the hands of the world. Beauty--as many have recognized--is pain suffered and transformed. Because the animal is adapted to its environment, it is denied the possibility of developing inward maturity and greatness. As an individual creature it cannot grow beyond the limits of its kind; and again, at death, it falls back with its capacities into the group Ego, from which its soul was something like an offshoot or a patrol sent out on reconnaissance.”
― Hermann Poppelbaum, Man and Animal Their Essential Difference